Introduction

The HE02 is a CPU cooler from SilverStone that has a tower heatsink, six heatpipes, and can be used in passive mode, i.e., without any fan. Let’s test it and see if it really works well without a fan.

According to the manufacturer, the HE02 can dissipate up to 95 W with no fan at all, 130 W with a case fan near the cooler, and more than 150 W with a 120 mm fan attached to the heatsink.

The HE02 comes in a brown cardboard box, as seen in Figure 1.

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Figure 1: Package

Figure 2 shows the contents of the box: heatsink, a small tube of thermal compound, manual, fan holders, and installation hardware. The HE02 comes with no fan.

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Figure 2: Accessories

Figure 3 displays the SilverStone HE02.

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Figure 3: The SilverStone HE02

This cooler is discussed in detail in the following pages.

The SilverStone HE02

Figure 4 illustrates the front of the heatsink. The heatsink is asymmetrical, being shifted to the right in order to not interfere with a tall chipset heatsink.

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Figure 4: Front view

Figures 5 and 6 reveal the sides of the cooler. Again, the heatsink is shifted to the rear, avoiding the space over memory modules.

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Figure 5: Side view

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Figure 6: Side view

The SilverStone HE02 (Cont’d)

In Figure 7, you can see the top of the cooler. The fins (and thus the entire heatsink) have a unique shape in order to fit 120 mm coolers on both the front and rear sides, as well as allowing access to the mounting screws.

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Figure 7: Top view

Figure 8 illustrates the crossed nickel-plated heatpipes that connect the base of the cooler to the heatsink. This design is interesting because it spreads the heat from the center of the CPU to both sides of the heatsink.

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Figure 8: Heatpipes

Figure 9 shows the base of the cooler, which is not exactly mirrored.

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Figure 9: Base

Installation

The first step of the installation of the HE02 is to prepare the backplate. You must install the four screws in the holes that match your CPU socket. Figure 10 shows the backplate with the screws installed in the socket LGA1155 position.

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Figure 10: Backplate with screws

Locate the backplate in the solder side of the motherboard, install four plastic spacers, and then the metal bars shown in Figure 11, securing them with four thumbnuts.

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Figure 11: Metal bars installed

Put the cooler in, holding it with a transversal bar. Initially, we tested the cooler as it appears in Figure 12, with no fan attached to the heatsink, but with the fan at the rear of the case. However, this setup proved to be insufficient to cool our system, since the CPU reached temperatures near 100° C and throttled down when under full load.

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Figure 12: Heatsink installed

Then we installed a SilverStone FM123 fan (120 mm, set to 2,000 rpm) on the cooler in order to run our benchmarking.

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Figure 13: With a fan installed

How We Tested

We tested the cooler with a Core i5-2500K CPU (quad-core, 3.3 GHz), which is a socket LGA1155 processor with a 95 W TDP (Thermal Design Power). In order to get higher thermal dissipation, we overclocked it to 4.0 GHz (100 MHz base clock and x40 multiplier), with 1.3 V core voltage (Vcore). This CPU was able to reach 4.8 GHz with its default core voltage, but at this setting, the processor enters thermal throttling when using mainstream coolers, reducing the clock and thus the thermal dissipation. This could interfere with the temperature readings, so we chose to maintain a moderate overclocking.

We measured noise and temperature with the CPU under full load. In order to get 100% CPU usage in all cores, we ran Prime 95 25.11 with the “In-place Large FFTs” option. (In this version, the software uses all available threads.)

We compared the tested cooler to other coolers we already tested, and to the stock cooler that comes with the Core i5-2500K CPU. Note that the results cannot be compared to measures taken on a different hardware configuration, so we retested some “old” coolers with this new methodology. This means you can find different values in older reviews than the values you will read on the next page. Every cooler was tested with the thermal compound that comes with it.

Room temperature measurements were taken with a digital thermometer. The core temperature was read with the SpeedFan program (available from the CPU thermal sensors), using an arithmetic average of the core temperature readings.

During the tests, the panels of the computer case were closed. The front and rear case fans were spinning at minimum speed in order to simulate the “normal” cooler use on a well-ventilated case. We assume that is the common setup used by a cooling enthusiast or overclocker.

The sound pressure level (SPL) was measured with a digital noise meter, with its sensor placed near the top opening of the case. This measurement is only for comparison purposes, because a precise SPL measurement needs to be made inside an acoustically insulated room with no other noise sources, which is not the case here.

Hardware Configuration

• Processor: Core i5-2500K
• Motherboard: ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z
• Memory: 6 GB OCZ (DDR3-1600/PC3-12800), configured at 1,600 MHz and 8-8-8-18 timings
• Hard disk: Seagate Barracuda XT 2 TB
• Video card: Point of View GeForce GTX 460 1 GB
• Video resolution: 1920x1080
• Video monitor: Samsung SyncMaster P2470HN
• Power supply: Seventeam ST-550P-AM
• Case:  Cooler Master HAF 922

Operating System Configuration

• Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit SP1

Software Used

• Prime95
• SpeedFan

Error Margin

We adopted a 2°C error margin, meaning temperature differences below 2°C are considered irrelevant.

Our Tests

The table below presents the results of our measurements. We repeated the same test on all coolers listed below. Each measurement was taken with the CPU at full load. In the models with a fan supporting PWM, the motherboard controlled the fan speed according to core load and temperature. On coolers with an integrated fan controller, the fan was set at the full speed.

Cooler	Room Temp.	Noise	Speed	Core Temp.	Temp. Diff.
Cooler Master Hyper TX3	18 °C	50 dBA	2850 rpm	69 °C	51 °C
Corsair A70	23 °C	51 dBA	2000 rpm	66 °C	43 °C
Corsair H100	26 °C	62 dBA	2000 rpm	64 °C	38 °C
EVGA Superclock	26 °C	57 dBA	2550 rpm	67 °C	41 °C
NZXT HAVIK 140	20 °C	46 dBA	1250 rpm	65 °C	45 °C
Thermalright True Spirit 120	26 °C	42 dBA	1500 rpm	82 °C	56 °C
Zalman CNPS12X	26 °C	43 dBA	1200 rpm	71 °C	45 °C
Zalman CNPS9900 Max	20 °C	51 dBA	1700 rpm	62 °C	42 °C
Titan Fenrir Siberia Edition	22 °C	50 dBA	2400 rpm	65 °C	43 °C
SilenX EFZ-120HA5	18 °C	44 dBA	1500 rpm	70 °C	52 °C
Noctua NH-L12	20 °C	44 dBA	1450 rpm	70 °C	50 °C
Zalman CNPS8900 Extreme	21 °C	53 dBA	2550 rpm	71 °C	50 °C
Gamer Storm Assassin	15 °C	48 dBA	1450 rpm	58 °C	43 °C
Deepcool Gammaxx 400	15 °C	44 dBA	1500 rpm	60 °C	45 °C
Cooler Master TPC 812	23 °C	51 dBA	2350 rpm	66 °C	43 °C
Deepcool Gammaxx 300	18 °C	43 dBA	1650 rpm	74 °C	56 °C
Intel stock cooler	18 °C	41 dBA	2000 rpm	97 °C	79 °C
Xigmatek Praeton	19 °C	52 dBA	2900 rpm	83 °C	64 °C
Noctua NH-U12P SE2	18 °C	42 dBA	1300 rpm	69 °C	51 °C
Deepcool Frostwin	24 °C	46 dBA	1650 rpm	78 °C	54 °C
Thermaltake Frio Advanced	13 °C	56 dBA	2000 rpm	62 °C	49 °C
Xigmatek Dark Knight Night Hawk Edition	9 °C	48 dBA	2100 rpm	53 °C	44 °C
Thermaltake Frio Extreme	21 °C	53 dBA	1750 rpm	59 °C	38 °C
Noctua NH-U9B SE2	12 °C	44 dBA	1700 rpm	64 °C	52 °C
Thermaltake WATER2.0 Pro	15 °C	54 dBA	2000 rpm	52 °C	37 °C
Deepcool Fiend Shark	18 °C	45 dBA	1500 rpm	74 °C	56 °C
Arctic Freezer i30	13 °C	42 dBA	1350 rpm	63 °C	50 °C
Spire TME III	8 °C	46 dBA	1700 rpm	70 °C	62 °C
Thermaltake WATER2.0 Performer	11 °C	54 dBA	2000 rpm	49 °C	38 °C
Arctic Alpine 11 PLUS	11 °C	45 dBA	2000 rpm	82 °C	71 °C
be quiet! Dark Rock 2	10 °C	41 dBA	1300 rpm	58 °C	48 °C
Phanteks PH-TC14CS	16 °C	47 dBA	1300 rpm	58 °C	42 °C
Phanteks PH-TC14PE	16 °C	48 dBA	1300 rpm	57 °C	41 °C
SilverStone HE01 (Q)	19 °C	44 dBA	1150 rpm	63 °C	44 °C
SilverStone HE01 (P)	20 °C	57 dBA	2050 rpm	62 °C	42 °C
Thermaltake WATER2.0 Extreme (S)	17 °C	44 dBA	1250 rpm	52 °C	35 °C
Thermaltake WATER2.0 Extreme (E)	17 °C	53 dBA	1900 rpm	50 °C	33 °C
Deepcool Neptwin	11 °C	46 dBA	1500 rpm	56 °C	45 °C
SilverStone HE02	19 °C	49 dBA	2000 rpm	64 °C	45 °C

In the graph below, you can see how many degrees Celsius hotter the CPU core is than the air outside the case. The lower this difference, the better is the performance of the cooler.

In the graph below, you can see how many decibels of noise each cooler makes.

Main Specifications

The main specifications for the SilverStone HE02 CPU cooler include:

• Application: Sockets LGA775, LGA1155, LGA1156, LGA1366, LGA2011, AM2, AM2+, AM3, AM3+, FM1, and FM2
• Dimensions: 6.7 x 5.1 x 6.3 inches (170 x 130 x 160 mm) (W x L x H)
• Fins: Aluminum
• Base: Nickel-plated copper
• Heat-pipes: Six 6-mm copper heatpipes
• Fan: Up to two, 120 mm (not included)
• Nominal fan speed: NA
• Fan air flow: NA
• Power consumption: NA
• Nominal noise level: NA
• Weight: 2.18 Lbs (990 g)
• More information: http://www.silverstonetek.com
• MSRP in the U.S.: USD 70.00

Conclusions

The SilverStone HE02 is a huge, very well-made CPU cooler, with a clever design that shifts the center of the heatsink from the base, offering better compatibility with motherboards and memory modules with tall heatsinks.

However, we were disappointed with its performance. This disappointment comes mainly from the promise that the HE02 could passively cool a CPU of up to 130 W. Our CPU has a TDP of 95 W at the stock clock, but it is overclocked, and we cannot determine how many watts it is actually dissipating. With no fan attached to the heatsink, but with a 120 mm fan installed on the rear panel of our case, the SilverStone H02 was no able to cool our CPU, as it reached temperatures near 100° C and throttled down when under full load. Therefore, we can say that the HE02 must not be used to passively cool an overclocked CPU. Installing a 120 mm fan to the heatsink, it reaches a good cooling performance, but we were expecting more from such a huge cooler.

The SilverStone HE02 CPU cooler is an impressive cooler, but it didn’t deliver as much cooling performance as promised. It receives our Bronze Award.